Thursday, May 27, 2010

I have been meaning for some time to write a post about why you should be reading the blog radicalarchives. In the meantime, read this post, which extracts from A History of Zionism by Walter Laqueur, on the assassination of Arab advocates of binationalism in the late 1940s, a particularly tragic episode for those of my political orientation.

I feel that this post by Michael Berube on the rhetorical styles of the left says something important, but I found it too long and dense to work out exactly what. However, I did enjoy the addendum at the end on Chomsky and 9/11. [UPDATE: Linked to the wrong post; have amended to the right one.]

Kellie Strøm makes some fascinating points about the glibness and insularity of the British "purple" voting reform movement, and also links to some interesting and important posts about Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan and voting reform. He has more must-click links on Iran, Islamism, dissidence and asylum here, including Johan Hari and Francis Sedgemore.

I often find Yasmin Alibhai-Brown irritating, but this piece is pretty good. Extract:

For me, the overwhelming argument against the burka (and various coverings for children, another growing abomination) is that there is such a thing as society. Community fetishes cannot override social communication, connection, obligations, equality, duties and understanding. Security and safety-measures too require facial identification. Politicians need to get assertive and argue that they believe in non-racist, universal human development. Effective policies to halt the spreading habit (in both senses) will then naturally follow.

And reformist Muslims too should speak up more frankly without fear or favour. A traditional Pakistani friend of mine – who always wears the shalwar kameez – recently refused service from a burka-ed librarian in one of our big libraries. The next time she went in, the face was no longer hidden. Maybe our new government should consult her. She could teach them how resistance, not acquiescence, gave us our past freedoms and will preserve our present ones.

Part of the Labour Party's response to the BNP's shift to being a small large party has been to re-brand itself as an anti-immigration party, a policy started by Phil Woolas in response to the rise of the BNP in the Northwest and then taken up by Margaret Hodge in her bid to keep her Barking seat. In other words, the BNP helped drive Labour Party policy, and this looks set to deepen with Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and Alan Johnson, for example, talking tough on immigration. Will Straw has a good post on this.

I've already posted too much about Gillian Duffy, and I don't want readers to gag on an overdose of Spiked, but this piece by Frank Furedi on the varieties of bigotry is worth reading. Related, I totally missed this peice in the (middle class Guardian) on the war on working class culture. The authors' full report, "The War on Working Class Culture", can be read in pdf here.

Monday, May 17, 2010

First, a few blogs that have caught my eye, of both local and non-local interest.

London Masala and Chips is the blog of a Labour-supporting British Asian mum who lives in South East London. Her election coverage has been good, and touches on lots of the same issues as we have here.

I aimed for songs that capture the effect I aim for at Bob From Brockley: to recreate the feeling of reading Hannah Arendt while eating greasy southern fried chicken bought in a Turkish Cypriot takeaway on the top deck of the 171 bus listening to Johnny Cash on your iPod but unable to hear it because the kids next to you is playing tinny grime music on his mobile phone. Here they are:

Calexico - Guns of Brixton

This epic spaghetti western cover of the Clash classic about police brutality is beautiful to listen to, but also somehow transposes the landscape of urban Sarf London to the American west, and so nicely chimes with my trans-Atlantic sensibility. (It's the reverse move to Alabama 3, who featured in my longlist.)

I've already written about this anti-fascist anthem: It's by Mordechai Gebirtig, who died in 1942 in the Kracow Ghetto. "S'Brent" tells the story of the burning of a shtetl, Przytyk, in 1936; rather than being simply a cry of agony, it is a call to action ("Di hilf iz nor in aykh aleyn gevendt" - help is in your hands alone) , and it was adopted as the anthem of the Kracow underground resistance during Nazi occupation. (Gebertig, incidentally, was a socialist, a member of Henryk Grossman's Jewish Social Democratic Party, which became part of the Bund.) You can listen to several other versions here (my recommendation is probably the one by Argentinian/Mexican cantor Leibele Jinich). Oi Va Voi's version features the gorgeous voice of Agi Szaloki, a young Hungarian folk and jazz singer who specialises in Gypsy traditions. You can listen to some clips of her music at her website. I've seen Oi Va Voi live a number of times, and they rock. When I first heard of them, as "a drum & bass klezmer band", I thought it was a comedy gimick, but I was so wrong.

Saturday, May 08, 2010

I think this is the last I have to say about the election. Three things, first on the left, then the far right, and at the bottom on the situation in my local area, Lewisham, and what it means. (In fact, nothing to do with the picture which I took from here.)

The BNP
I was wrong to say that the BNP performed abysmally. Half a million votes in the General Elections alone. They may have lost deposits in a fair few places, and been kicked off Barking council,.but they have become a significant force in the political scene. Nick Griffin is now treated by the media as more or less a regular, mainstream figure, despite his increasingly obvious wackiness. This is a real cause for concern. The struggle continues.

The left
As I wrote last night, the far left have performed terribly, far worse than the fash. The Greens got half the vote of the BNP, and the socialist parties didn't even get close to that. I suggested last night that the low vote is for two reasons. First, the reason I voted Labour: the tribal instinct when the chips are really down brought a lot of socialist voters back to the fold. Second, because the hard left is totally and utterly out of touch with its original core constituency, ordinary working class people.

The left desperately needs major surgery. For example, it needs to learn to articulate the arguments on immigration, not assume that the Gillian Duffies are bigots, but clearly argue exactly why they are wrong, and what we need to do about it. And, again just for example, it needs to abandon identity politics and the perverse obsession with the national liberation of particular faraway peoples to the exclusion of the issues that affect people like Gillian Duffy here. There's lots more examples I could give, but those will do for now.

Lewisham
Labour have done extraordinarily well in the local and mayoral elections in Lewisham. Despite the national swing away from Labour. Despite the utter disregard of Mayor Steve Bullock's new Labour administration for local democracy and its disasterous policy on key issues like schools.

The Liberal Democrats put up an extremely impressive fight here. They were extemely visible on the streets, and their placards dominated the landscape. While I was very un-impressed by mayoral candidate Chris Maines and by yummy mummy parliamentary candidate Tamara Langley, they had some other strong and credible candidates, such as Lewisham East's Pete Pattison in the Generals and Max Calo in the locals - popular local figures of known integrity.

Similarly, the Greens have been excellent councillors in Brockley and Ladywell. The Greens put up a strong fight in Crofton Park, where I voted for Jim Jepps and his colleagues. The Socialists in Telegraph Hill have also been great councillors, both for their local areas and for the borough as a whole (personally, I think the Greens should not have stood against them). I think the picture was fairly similar in Greenwich, and in some other inner London boroughs. For what it is worth, I offer my commiserations to Jim, Sue, Max, Jess Leech and Ian Page in particular, as well as my appreciation of Andrew Milton who did not stand for re-election.

I think that the Labour domination of Lewisham and Greenwich has been increasingly unhealthy in recent years, and have no explanation for why Labour did so well this year, despite doing not so well in the General elections, where the stakes are surely higher.

Friday, May 07, 2010

Checking back into the post-election situation. Despite the overall bad picture, there are a few reasons to be cheerful.

1. The BNP have done abysmally, not least in their key seat Barking, where they have lost all of their councillors and the entire council is Labour. Credit mainly to Hope Not Hate I'd say.

2. The horrific George Galloway did abysmally too, getting a smaller vote than the utterly un-charismatic, non-celebrity Lindsey German got in the last election. In fact, Jim FitzPatrick increased the Labour vote in Poplar and Limehouse, despite Ken Livingstone and the Islamists spreading all kinds of lies and rumours about him.

3. Rushanara Ali also retook Bethnal Green and Bow from Respect. Brockley Central: "We can offer this exclusive insight on the new MP - she is very nice."

Inner London stuck with Old Labour, basically, who fought a good campaign (which, since it was led by Ken’s old Chief of Staff Simon Fletcher will annoy the tits off Andrew Gilligan). Karen Buck holding on in Westminster North and Andy Slaughter in Hammersmith (beating high-profile Look-the-Tories-aren’t-racists Shaun Bailey and his gang of PR merchants, no less) were indicators to me that good local Labour MPs with a personal following were resistant to the Boris charm. Conversely our Brownite MP Ann Keen lost, a victim of expenses and, if truth be told, not a great constituency record, and Tony McNulty suffered the same fate again due presumably to expenses. [...] Jon Cruddas was safely returned and John McDonnell in Harlington too. The two Islington constituencies remained Labour, crushingly so.

So where does this leave Boris? Well, when elected he was supposed to use his charisma to deliver London to Cameron, which would have won him the Premiership. Instead Boris has been decidedly low-profile, after being opportunistically beaten up by Labour over the East London Line opening (which was then delayed) he rather skulked – apart from that he’s done walkabouts in key areas, which don’t seem to have produced much – where Labour seats were lost there appear to have been extraneous factors like an undefendably low majority or expenses scandals rather than a Boris Halo – even then his walkabout in Feltham doesn’t seem to have damaged Alan Keen much while high profile visits to Hampstead nearly pulled it off, but Jackson held on by 42 votes with the Lib Dems a very close third.

Perhaps, then, he spread himself too thickly in the West – Angie Bray in Ealing Central & Acton won fairly comfortably, while the real damage was being done out east where a string of supposedly wobbly Labour seats returned a red rosette; Eltham, Erith, Poplar, Dagenham. Perhaps pissing off the entire South East London area by scrapping transport schemes and reneging on the impossible promises over tidal flow in the Blackwall Tunnel may have lost Boris’s old mate Cameron the chance of power and paradoxically opened the way for a Boris-led right-wing coup? It’ll be interesting to see where the ambitious Mayor goes from here, particularly with the borough election results.

OK. I'm going to look at the Lewisham Council results and then return.

Update 1: The Lewisham Mayoral results are in. John Hamilton got a respectable 6000 in the first round but Steve Bullock won comfortably. I think he has been a very poor mayor, but he is clearly preferable to Chris Maines. The council results don't seem to have appeared yet.

Update 2: Lewisham council elections are likely to come in after I go to bed, so in the meantime here's some analysis of the Greenwich council results. Congratulations to Darryl Chamberlain, gracious in defeat, who got a very creditable vote and would have made a great councillor. Hopefully next time. As with Bullock keeping Lewisham, Labour total domination in Greenwich is not a good thing, but it is good to see the Tories routed there. (See the Boris factor above.)

Great to see so many women and young candidates (re-)elected for Labour. It struck me that, on the whole, Labour's candidates look like modern Britain - generally, the Tories (viz. Zac Goldsmith) don't.

I'd been wondering what ordinary Lib Dems would make of the prospect of shoring up the Tories - and especially those who joined the SDP from Labour. But I've just heard David Owen on the BBC insisting in his usual abrasive and pompous way (a fair match, then, for his interviewer, Paxman) that Cameron has the best claim to govern...confirming the Labour prejudice that, for many, the SDP was just a stopping-off point on the way to Conservatism, and that Lib Dems have always been more viscerally anti-Labour than anti-Tory.

Oliver Kamm's take on the 'result' is worth reading. On this morning of disappointments, he shares my consolatory delight that the Guardian got it wrong.

Update 4: Starting to go through Modernity's long list of links. Here's his take on Galloway: "I imagine George will now embark on another fund raising tour of the Middle East or make more of an effort to push his media career at Press TV. Either way expect more inflammatory language from him."

Update 5: One striking thing about the election results is the absolutely disasterous vote for the hard left parties. Apart from Respect, whose vote was, I believe, a vote for communalism and identity politics rather than a vote for socialism, socialist candidates did very badly. Looking at the numbers which Phil lays out, almost none get four figure votes - starkly contrasting to the four figures BNP candidates were getting. Dave Nellist - unusual in that he is both a well-known, highly respected, hard working man locally with some national profile - was one of the slightly better performances, and his share of the vote went down. I guess the low vote is for two reasons. First, the reason I voted Labour: the tribal instinct when the chips are really down brought a lot of socialist voters back to the fold. Second, because the hard left is totally and utterly out of touch with its original core constituency, ordinary working class people.

Update 6: OK, I'm going to bed. The Lewisham Council results are not yet in, although indications are of Labour success. My last link of the night is to Max Calo, on his way to the count, gracious towards Heidi Alexander.

Tired, depressed, hungover. I stayed up until: couldn't take the idiotic commentary on the TV any longer. (Poor Armando Ianucci, having to stand next to Joan Collins all that time.) Nothing had improved when I got up early this morning.

Starting to look at the results in more detail. Pleased to see that the BNPfailed to win any seats and that Nick Griffin himself was decisely rejected in Barking. Depressing though that over half a million people voted for them nationally, twice as many as voted for the Greens in the general elections.

The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, after a poor campaign, achieved 12,007 votes, not very impressive.

The Lewisham Deptford results are still not in, but I was pleased to see Heidi Alexander, one of the best examples of Labour in Lewisham, comfortably take Lewisham East. Labour's Jim Dowd has kept Lewisham West.

update 2: Apparently, the count hasn't even begun in Poplar and Limehouse or Bethnal Green and Bow, so we will have to wait to see if the odious George Galloway has won the latter or the excellent Rushanara Ali the former.

I am also pleased to see Jon Cruddas, one of my favourite MPs, retain his seat. Other MPs I like did who retained their seats include Denis MacShane, with a somewhat reduced majority, John Mann and Jim Murphy, with increased majorities. Cruddas, according to the commentariat, is now poised to play a key role in the Labour leadership issue...

update 3: Got to go and do some job work. Keep your eye on Brockley Central for local results.

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

I went to my local Starburger cafe in Crofton Park for my lunch (liver and bacon if you're interested). I was pleasantly suprised to see a Socialist Party poster in the window. Until I saw they had ecumenically put up Lib Dem, Green, Labour and Tory posters too. Then I was cheered further when I went across the road to get my hair cut at George the barber's. He's voting Labour and told me 8 out of 10 of his customers are. A rather unrepresentative sample however: a cheap working class men's barber in a sea of gentrification and apathy... Then the depression set in when I crossed back over the road to the Co-op and saw the row of newspapers, almost all sporting pictures of the sickening features of David Cameron.

Apart from the Independent, which is now all out for Clegg, because this is our chance to change the voting system - which seems trivial to me, considering the Liberal Democrats will harshly cut public services resulting in massive public sector redundancy and increased poverty for the most vulnerable. But, hey, the poor will have the chance under Proportional Representation to vote for the BNP to express their rage. (The Guardian, moral swamp, scuttled over to Clegg too, but they seem to have backed off a bit.)

And apart from the honourable Mirror, which is making a big deal of the useless toffs who will sweep into parliament if the polls are correct, people like old Etonian Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, who seeks to inherit the seat his pater held, along with the Elizabethan mansion he lives in. As for Norm, for me and the Mirrorsocial justice trumps PR, trumps everything else. Or, as Nick Cohen puts it, "The cant and bourgeois hypocrisy of Nick Clegg and his party won't be of any use to those who are dirt poor."

It seems to me that Tony Blair genuinely forsook the socialist ideology of the political party he joined, to become a post-ideological figure. David Cameron is mini-Blair: the same bland, chappy, fresh-faced post-ideological image of Blair ca.1997. But the difference is that Blair actually meant it. Cameron is actually, inside the bland exterior, an ideological Thatcherite. We know this because he has promised to restore fox-hunting, despite the opposition of 75% of the electorate, because it is his class and ideological instinct. We know this because he wants to cut inheritance tax at a time of deficit, even though it benefits a tiny number of rich people, because it is his class and ideological instinct. We know this because he took his party out of an alliance with Merkel and Sarkozy in favour of people who make Nick Griffin appear mainstream.

Nick Clegg, however, is mini-Cameron. I can't work out whether it is an advantage or a disadvantage over Cameron that he is genuine rather than cynical in his lack of conviction behind his lack of ideology, that beneath his bland meaningless exterior is a bland meaningless interior. Never have I seen on television a political performer so contrived, so staged, so airbrushed and coached, so vacuous. In the age of Nick Clegg, Tony Blair appears like a statesman.

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Brits say "badge"; Americans say "button". Clear in this case who is superior. This month's effort is rather amateurish. I'm posting it a day late so as not to demean the working class, whose holiday 1 May of course is.

The late, great Fred Halliday on Noam Chomsky in 2001: "He's become the guru of the new anti-capitalist and Third World movements. They take his views very uncritically; it's part of the Seattle mood - whatever America does is wrong. He confronts orthodoxy but he's becoming a big simplifier. What he can't see is Third World and other regimes that are oppressive and not controlled by America."

And other current fans of this supposed libertarian socialist include the post-totalitarian disinfromation outlet Pravda and the totalitarian regime in Iran, whose peace-loving qualities he praised in a recent interview (they haven't been aggressive "for centuries" he says, neglecting the proxy wars Iran has fought in Lebannon, Gaza, Iraq and elsewhere, following a pattern of arm's-length combat Chomsky has been so vigorous in condemning when America does it). Oddly, however, Press.TV does not quote Chomsky when he correctly describes Iran as being ruled by "a loathsome regime".